Some Quiet Place (27 page)

I lean against the trunk of a tree, huddling into myself in the twilight. I close my eyes, torturing myself with more memories.

“Someday we’ll leave,” Landon tells me, eyes so bright, so alive. He holds a book of maps in his hand. “Just you and me, Rebecca. We’ll leave the country, even.” His gaze focuses on something in the distance. “I’ve read about things I can’t even begin to imagine without seeing for myself. I mean, there are pictures, but … ” He sighs. “They’re not enough.”

“Things like what?” I ask, lying on my back and squinting up at the sun. I pluck a blade of grass loose from the green beneath me.

Landon finally lies down beside me. We both smell like earth and excitement and daydreams.

“I want to see Mount Rushmore,” he tells me, his voice soft. “Can you see us there? Looking up at huge mountains that have faces carved into them? And cities! New York! It’s full of towers so tall they touch the sky.”

Days go by. One morning I sit on a mossy bank by the river, staring down into the currents. The water by my feet is clear and trickles gently over the smooth rocks. There’s a splash nearby, and when I glance over, all there is to show for it is an oily sheen, floating on the surface. The river quickly carries it away. Trout?

“He’d take you back, you know.”

Jumping, I turn to see Fear leaning against a tree, arms crossed in that arrogant manner of his. He’s staring at me with an unfathomable expression on his frozen, lovely face.

I haven’t seen Fear since I healed him, since we both thought I was a human girl called Elizabeth, since I was wearing her mask. At the sight of his achingly familiar face, the breath catches in my throat.

“Fear.” I stand, brushing off my bottom, swallowing audibly. My dark hair—still foreign to me—tumbles into my eyes, and I’m grateful for the curtain to hide behind. I don’t know what to say. I’m vulnerable. He can see me now; he knows the truth. Does he hate me for what I did? For hiding all this time? I resist the urge to throw myself at him, experience his hands on me for real after so many years of restraint and lies. I know that he wants another now. Someone who was never real to begin with.

Fear doesn’t seem to sense my inner turmoil. “Are you going to go back?” His tone is so distant it hurts.

I blink. “Go back where?”

He sighs impatiently. “To the humans. Back to the boy.”

Joshua. He means Joshua. I turn my back to Fear, trying to muster the courage to tell him he’s wrong. I can’t. I’ve faced so many things, but this … this I’m not ready to confront. I can’t handle his rejection. I’m good at running from the truth. As I bend toward the skeleton of a dead flower—fresh color streaking through the petals at my touch—I try to change the subject, asking, “Have you done something to Tim? No one’s seen him since Charles ran him off, and I don’t think he’d stay away just because Charles threatened to call the sheriff.”

But Fear isn’t going to let me run. He strides toward me, bringing a cool breeze and all his horror with him. “I warned him never to touch you again,” is all he says. Then, “Answer me. Are you going to go back?”

I cringe, and butterflies erupt in my stomach as his essence wraps itself around me. My pulse starts to race.

Fear breathes down my neck. Helpless, I am assailed by images of us together. His lips pressed to my neck. Legs intertwined. Grass sticking to our backs. I whirl around to glare at him. “Get away from me.”

“Oh, you’re mad now. You must really miss him.”

“I don’t miss him.”
I’m mad at you for staying away. I’m mad at you for falling in love with someone else. I’m mad at myself.

But he doesn’t hear my thoughts. “Now you’re the one pretending, Elizabeth.”

“Don’t call me that,” I snap, glaring at him. Is he deliberately being cruel, throwing it in my face that I can never be the one he loves again? “Elizabeth was the little girl whose life I stole. I’m just the fool who tried to be a human, and I damaged everyone I came into contact with. I’m not Elizabeth. Even if it hurts so much sometimes I want to kill myself, I’m going to remember myself this time.”

Fear lifts a finger in the air, teasing. “Ah, but you are Elizabeth. You’ve brought a little of her back with you. Don’t you remember who you were, Rebecca, before Landon died?” Before I can retort or hate him for mentioning my twin’s name, Fear silences me by putting his finger over my lips. A jolt runs through me at the touch, and I struggle against the terror suddenly edging in.

“Listen to me,” Fear whispers now. His breathing is
uneven. “You’re a little of both now. Rebecca in all your beauty and grace, and that little bit of snobbery”—he doesn’t let me utter a protest—“and Elizabeth in your gentleness. The way you endured my feelings for you because of your compassion. Really, I feel like an idiot for not seeing it. Maybe some part of me knew.”

And in his search for me, he found a new obsession. I swallow, all my sharp words and outrage fading again.
Endured
his feelings? As Elizabeth, maybe. Now I
crave
them. I remember those nights we spent together, the way his fingers felt brushing over my skin. “Fear—”

“It’s fine,” he cuts in, dismisses what he thinks is an apology. When I lift my gaze, Fear sighs. Removing his hand from my cheek, he brushes his silky hair out of his face and looks away. “It’s always been my lot to want what I can’t have,” he says. “This is no exception. I’ll survive, Rebecca.” His grin is tinged with sadness and defiance, something he tries to hide from me but miserably fails.

Heart in my throat, I move as if to touch him, but Fear shakes his head, moving back so he’s out of my reach. Doesn’t he know that if I could bring Elizabeth back for him again, I would?

I chew my lower lip, wishing again that I had the strength to tell him how I really feel, that I don’t want him to leave me again, that it’s him I think about, not Joshua. It never was, even that night I chose him over Fear. Where is that damn Courage when you actually want him to appear? “Fear—”

“Don’t.” Again he doesn’t let me finish. “You’ve given me enough. Just a glance in my direction was a rush.” He winks, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. He’s moving even farther away and I don’t attempt to stop him. What more is there to say? As if to agree with me, Fear shrugs, and his form begins to lighten, go transparent, as he leaves me yet again. Even though I hate myself for it, I don’t stop him.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Fear murmurs. “Just go to him. Love him. Be happy again. After all you’ve been through, you deserve it. I was right, by the way,” he adds unexpectedly.

I swallow. “Right about what?” I ask faintly.

He fades completely from sight. “You do look beautiful in a dress,” his voice whispers in my ear. Then … silence. I let him go.

Twenty-Five

Sometimes I think I hear my twin’s tread on the ground, coming closer. It always turns out to be nothing. A deer, a breeze, my imagination. That voice in the back of my head has been nudging me lately. The numbness is gone, along with everything else, and the voice of feeling hisses at me, demands that I acknowledge it’s not the absence of my family holding me back from life now. From the very thing I can’t make disappear with an illusion. Forever a part of me, no matter how much I resent it.

One afternoon, as I pick my way across a creek, Courage is suddenly beside me. When I don’t stop he walks with me. I glance at his profile sidelong, curious as to what he could possibly want. But I refuse to ask, so we trek in silence together. The bare trees watch us.

Courage doesn’t let the stillness remain for long. “So is this your plan? To wander around here and mope for the rest of your life?” He walks so perfectly, so controlled, arms behind his back, shoulders straight. His boots hit the ground with tidy
clip
s. I can’t help comparing him, over and over, to his brother. Fear has a bright façade and dark insides; he’s horror and a windy recklessness that carries millions over the plains with no hope of ever stopping. And Courage … he’s dark on the outside but carries a light within; he’s calm and encouraging and his very breath is a soothing dash of water on a hot, hot day.

“You’re easily distracted,” Courage notes. He stops, and I choose to stop alongside him. A slant of sunlight falls across my face, but I don’t move out of the way. Instead I revel in the warmth, shivering when I remember the darkness of Nightmare’s shack.

Suddenly, when Courage speaks, he is hardness and de-termination. He cuts right to the point, wills me to accept his words. “The other plane loves you. They always have. It wasn’t your brother that was the strong one. You were able to bring us all together as no others could, because of the sound of your laughter and your smiles. Your very step on the forest floor had the trees stretching tall to impress. It was you, Rebecca, and not Landon that survived Nightmare. And why do you think that is?”

I consider walking away, but Courage has me intrigued. Instead of answering his question, though, I tilt my head and study him in a removed way, as if I’m hardly bothered by his confrontation. “Why do you care so much?”

Finally his stony expression cracks. He sighs, impatience leaking into the sound. A small breeze stirs a strand of my hair. “Because not only does my brother care for you, silly creature, but I hold some affection for you as well,” he snaps. “Have you forgotten the dances? The stories you told me on the days I thought my brother would smother me with his zealous campaign of terror?”

Of course I haven’t forgotten. I do remember all those nights in these woods. Courage always stood by in the shadows, watching the festivities. If he continued on in that manner for most of the party, I would eventually drag him into the noise and the lights and force him to dance with me. And
the stories … they were Landon’s, but I repeated them to Courage when I found him rubbing his temples, deep in contemplation. Fear is strong, and sometimes courage is not so easy to instill in a human inclined to succumb to the panic.

I turn my back to Courage, smiling. “It’s nice, seeing you ruffled. It’s been too long since I’ve kept you on your toes.”

“Yes, much too long,” he agrees, wry now. “No games, please, Rebecca.”

Frustration bubbles up within me. “What do you all expect me to do? Go back? Live with the humans? No. No one can make me.” I hate how that last part comes out so petulant, as if I’m a child. Scowling, I feign interest in a withering tree. It crackles and grows taller, greener, at the brush of my fingers, a strange appearance in the middle of this sleeping forest.

Courage touches me for the first time, grasping my arm. A surge of feeling rushes through my body, and I’m seized with a desire to conquer the world. There’s nothing but horizon before me—I can run and leave this place of ghosts and do whatever I want—

“Stop it.” Stubborn, I keep my gaze glued to the ground.

Courage places his gentle fingers beneath my chin and lifts my face. He’s too piercing, too right, and it hurts. “We want you to be happy. You are Life. If you’re not content, we’re not either.”

My lower lip trembles, and I bite it. I despise weakness; why, then, do I seem to have so much of it? “Nothing happened the way it was supposed to,” I whisper, closing my eyes. I remember the desire burning in Fear’s eyes, Joshua’s kiss in the warmth of his barn, Maggie’s bittersweet smile, Landon’s blood on my hands. “I just wanted to go to … some quiet place. To forget. To be someone else. Nothing happened the way it was supposed to,” I repeat. “And the truth is … I’m scared.” Finally, I admit it. My voice shakes, and I utter a cry of annoyance.

Courage smiles. Pinches my chin playfully before releasing me. “My brother will never be far from you,” he says. “Best get used to the feeling.”

I step away, rolling my eyes, but Courage isn’t done yet. “What exactly are you afraid of?” he urges.

A bird passes overhead. Its shadow moves quickly over the trees. I watch it soar. “I’m afraid that if I go on and live as Rebecca James, Landon will think I’m forgetting him.”

“If he’s watching, he knows that’s not possible. After all, even when you were under one of the strongest illusions I’ve ever encountered, you didn’t forget. Did you?” Courage steps away. He’s leaving soon. I can feel him gathering power around him.

“Their world is frightening,” I whisper. “I don’t know if I can go back into it.”

His words are so soft a mouse wouldn’t be able to hear them, but they waft over to me on the air. “As a wise human girl once told me, you fear what you don’t understand.”

“Not human,” I correct.

“Humanity is a choice, power or no power.”

Opening my mouth, I spin to meet him, but Courage is somewhere else in the world, his business with me apparently finished.

He always did have to have the last word.

Life. It’s a funny thing. Some want it, some throw it away. Some cling to it, some have it stolen from them. It’s terrifying … which is maybe why I was drawn to Fear in the first place. It can’t be coincidence that we met and loved in both lifetimes. Rebecca James, Elizabeth Caldwell. He’s my match, my equal. And now, finally, I’m willing to admit what I want. Life. With him.

The choice has been waiting ever since the illusion broke. When I was Elizabeth, Fear sought me out time and time again. We both know that it’s my turn. I can feel Landon in the back of my head, a kind presence in my shadow, urging me on. And the effects of Courage’s touch linger, strengthen, urge me to face my uncertainties. I can’t live in the past for the rest of my existence. Denial was right; my time to mourn is done. I’ll never forget my twin or what happened to him—that day will always be a dark shroud on my soul—but I can’t run from myself anymore.

I do everything I can to bring Fear to me. First I sit in a chair, close my eyes, and remember the entire experience with Nightmare. His teeth, that shack, his knives, my blood spilling to the ground. And my mouth goes dry, my pulse quickens, but still nothing. Next, I go to town and rent some horror movies. Spend two hours watching bloodshed and teenage parties turn into carnage on the ancient television. It works; my palms sweat and it’s difficult to keep my eyes open. But he doesn’t come.

I’m done with this.

The door slams against the wall when I storm outside. My skirt flaps around my knees as I march toward the ocean, toward the perilous cliff edge. I hold out my arms on either side of me like I’m about to take flight, like I’m one of Sarah’s birds. I position my feet so that only my heels are touching solid ground. The rest of me feels the open air. Taking a breath, I look down. The ocean, sensing me so close, pounds against the rocks with renewed vigor. I am Life. I am the ocean.

It doesn’t take him long.

“What the hell are you doing?” Fear hisses, wrapping his hand around my arm. I’ve never heard him so livid.

Terror explodes in my chest. I don’t turn, but I wrench myself free of his grip, ignoring how much I want it. “Are you going to let me talk this time?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Fear’s black coat whipping against his boot. He moves close again, and I know he’s thinking about yanking me back. “Why are you doing this, Rebecca?” he asks, his voice low, so serious.
Rebecca
. Not Elizabeth. For a second I’m tempted to lose my nerve, I’m convinced that he doesn’t really love me anymore, I ruined everything.

No
. I steel myself. Even though I thought I was immune, I’ve been letting Fear’s essence control my every move. And it stops now.

“I’m in love with you,” I blurt, glaring at the sun. “I’m in love with you, not Joshua, and it’s you I want to be with. I mean, I want to try. Again.” I clear my throat, blushing. I can’t bring myself to look at him. The words pound around us, carried in swirls by the wind.
In love with you … not Joshua … try again
…

There’s a three-second silence as he processes this. Then he says, “Why don’t you step back from the ledge, and I’ll let you know what I think about that.”

What if you’re too late? What if you’ve lost him?
a niggling voice in the back of my head worries. The ocean calls to me:
Life. Life
.
Yes
, I think.
I am
. And I need to live. So I shuffle back.

I raise my eyes to Fear’s, prepared for rejection, for phrases like
too late
and
can’t work
. He stares down at me for what feels like forever, those lovely blue eyes so piercing that they poke through my very soul like it’s nothing but paper. I swallow. “I—”

He hauls me against him and crushes my lips with his.

I respond instantly, even as his touch invokes goose bumps, raising the hair on my arms. His fingers travel down my spine as I tilt my head. A delicious shiver erupts from the touch. Not close enough, not close enough … I stand on my tiptoes, every part of me fusing to his hard body, and wrap my arms around his neck. A muted feeling of terror edges in, but nothing that would tear me away from him. Thirteen years. After an illusion that changed my face, changed my being, he found me. Thirteen years he’s loved me and waited for me.

Distantly, I sense Joy standing behind us, watching. Her hand rests on my shoulder. But she’s not alone. There are more, touching me or just watching.

“Take a picture, it lasts longer,” Fear growls. His lips move against mine as he speaks. Smiling, I open my mouth, deepening the kiss. We both forget our audience. The rest of the world fades away into beautiful hues of peach and black and white. It’s so hard to breathe; no, I can’t breathe at all when his tongue does that … but who needs air?

“I never did say it before, did I?” I whisper. He presses his forehead to mine, breathing in the smell of me. I smile faintly. “I love you.”

“You can say that as many times as you want,” he murmurs. Somehow his embrace tightens, and he doesn’t need words to express how much he missed me. We hold each other for so long that the other Emotions get bored and leave. Once we’re completely alone, Fear presses his lips to my ear. As he speaks, I can’t repress another delicious shiver. “You asked me once if I ever get tired of being who I am,” he reminds me. “And the answer is this: only when I have to leave you.”

I smile, clutching his coat. My mouth is tucked in the curve between his neck and his shoulder. I could stay like this forever. I imagine us here decades from now, a stone statue entwined in each other. This brings thoughts of the future, and I finally break the blissful peace by asking softly, “How is this going to work?” Things are so different now.

Fear pulls back a little, smoothing damp strands of hair away from my face. His thumbs brush the edges of my jaw. “Easy,” he answers. “I show up when you need me, and I show up especially when you don’t need me.” He grins, an impish light in his eyes. I kiss him again, loving the feel of his skin against mine. So we won’t be a normal couple. Since when have I ever been normal, anyway?

Purpose is building up inside of me again, and suddenly I’m filled with the urge to tie up all the loose ends I left behind. To return Life to where it was lacking. “There’s something I have to do,” I say, pulling myself out of the circle of Fear’s arms. “Back in Edson. I’ll let you know when I’m done. Okay?”

He kisses my nose. “Just don’t go looking for cliffs. I’ll know when you want me.”

I can’t help smiling some more. My face almost hurts. “I’ll always want you.”

With a tender light in his eyes, Fear vanishes.

I pack the bare essentials, get in Elizabeth’s truck, and go.

The hours fly by unnoticed. Late the next day, that sign I’ve been looking for comes into view:
Welcome to Edson
. The words are chipping, fading. Somehow, I’d expected it to be different, changed in the time I’ve been gone. But everything in this small town is comfortable, mindless of the rest of the world sprinting by. I pass Hal’s Hardware, the clinic, Fowler’s Grocery, and the school.

There’s a face uppermost in my mind, the person I know I need to see the most. But there’s someone else I have to visit before I seek Joshua out. Within minutes, I pull into Morgan Richardson’s driveway.

The front door is unlocked. I enter without hesitation, and pause a moment to study my surroundings. The place looks different in the daytime. I remember the ominous air the night of the party, Fear’s flight, Morgan’s single word:
Run
. Suppressing a shudder, I climb the steps.

The sound of some reality TV show drifts down the hall, and I follow it to Morgan’s room. She’s sitting there, stuck in front of the television again.

“Excuse me, what are you doing here?”